Sunday, 29 January 2017

Inverleith House - One More Victim of the Culture Wars

As dusk fell on October 23rd 2016, Inverleith House,
the internationally renowned, publicly-owned contemporary art gallery
housed within the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, closed its doors.
It was the final day of I Still Believe in Miracles, a
thirtieth anniversary exhibition that brought together work by some
of the most celebrated artists in the world, who had all shown at
Inverleith House during its astonishing artistic life. This wasn’t
just a normal exhibition closure, however.

Earlier that week, it had been reported that Inverleith House
would no longer be continuing with a dedicated contemporary art
programme, and that I Still Believe in Miracles was likely
to be the last exhibition to be held in Inverleith House. On the day
of the closure, Product published an open letter to RBGE’s
board of trustees posing twenty-three questions. These were in
response to what appeared to be a lack of transparency regarding a
then-unseen publicly funded report, A Future for Inverleith
House, drafted by Glasgow-based commercial consultants, Kelly
and Company. Amongst other things, Product asked why the
staff of Inverleith House had been instructed not to speak to the
media.

Three months on, and despite numerous requests to RBGE, no answers
have been forthcoming. Product has repeatedly informed RBGE
that any answers they give will be published in full. Product
has also asked RBGE that if they are unable or unwilling to answer
the twenty-three questions, if they could explain why. Again, they
were told that their answer would be published unedited. This is to
ensure that RBGE is not misrepresented in any way.

RBGE’s press office has assured Product that written
answers to the questions will be given shortly. Should they ever
materialise, these will be posted in full.

The gallery’s enforced closure itself saw an estimated 700
protestors visit Inverleith House for what was styled by organisers
the Scottish Contemporary Art Network as a mass visit.

As the petition grew, another open letter was drawn up. Drafted
and signed by more than 200 major artists and high-profile figures
including Richard Demarco, Douglas Gordon and Tracey Emin, it was
sent on November 8th 2016 was addressed to Sir Muir
Russell, the former Scottish Government civil servant who is the
chair of RBGE’s board of trustees.

Other signatories of the letter included actors Val Kilmer and
Ewan McGregor. As some wag pointed out, if Inverleith House has
Batman and Obi Wan Kenobi on side, the not-so-super villains who
closed it had better watch out. The letter can be found here –
http://www.saveinverleithhouse.com/open-letter.html

In truth, such vital high-profile support is up against a form of
cultural vandalism that attacks, not with Hollywood high kicks and
light sabres, but with the furtive cunning of middle-managers doing a
stock-take.

On November 18th 2016, a redacted version of A
Future for Inverleith House was released to several
publications, including Product, following a Freedom of
Information request from the Herald newspaper. If documents
released by way of an FOI are redacted, with some material blanked
out, it’s often for reasons of commercial sensitivity. The report
was released on the final day of the deadline required for a response
to all FOI requests.

At the time of writing, A Future for Inverleith House has
yet to be published, either on RBGE’s website or anywhere else in
the public domain, as Product was led to believe would be
the case.

Over fifty-five pages, A Future for Inverleith House
makes numerous proposals regarding the best ways for Inverleith House
to move forward. Some of these are sensible and achievable, others
less so. Such is the way of reports like this, which must attempt to
cover all bases. At no point, however, is there any recommendation
that RBGE should abruptly shut down Inverleith House’s art
programme without warning, without any apparent public consultation
and without any meaningful statement of intent regarding its future.

Holyrood has been oddly quiet on the subject other than a
supportive tweet from Culture Secretary Fiona Hyslop and the
announcement of a yet-to-be-convened working group. But at
Westminster, an early day motion tabled by SNP MP George Kerevan has
thus far been signed by sixteen MPs. The motion can be found here. –
https://www.parliament.uk/edm/2016-17/712

Meanwhile, in a badly-lit corner next to the toilets of the John
Hope Gateway building at the main West Gate entrance of RBGE, an
exhibition of thirty posters for exhibitions shown at Inverleith
House can be seen. At the entrance of the exhibition, called I
Still Believe..., the name of every show seen there over the
last thirty years is listed. Its classicist formality gives it the
air of a monument.

As autumn turned to winter, the doors of Inverleith House remained
closed, and Product’s questions remained unanswered.
In December, the 2016 Turner Prize was awarded to painter and
sculptor Helen Marten. This was for works that included projects at
the 56th Venice Biennale and her solo exhibition,
Eucalyptus Let Us In, seen at Greene Naftali in New York.

Although the announcement of Marten’s win largely met with quiet
admiration, former UK Cabinet Minister Michael Gove tweeted his
disapproval, describing Marten’s work as ‘modish crap.’ Gove
had previously commented that the Turner Prize “celebrates
ugliness, nihilism and narcissism – the tragic emptiness of now.”
Given that over the last thirty years Inverleith House has shown the
most Turner Prize winners and nominees outside of the Tate Gallery in
London, this brings us back to RBGE’s ongoing closure of the space.

The opinions of RBGE’s senior staff on contemporary art are not
on record. Nor is it known what arts-based qualifications are held by
the RBGE staff who sanctioned the closure. It is worth noting that
Inverleith House’s Director and Curator of Exhibitions for the last
thirty years, Paul Nesbitt, is a qualified botanist.

Whatever the views of senior RBGE staff on contemporary art, they
don’t justify the closure of a gallery which has been at the centre
of Scottish life for fifty years, ever since Inverleith House became
the first home of the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art. It
does call into question why anyone seemingly lacking any knowledge of
visual art was appointed to take decisions for an organisation
sporting an adored and internationally-respected art gallery.

This is the real rub of the sorry saga that has given RBGE more
negative publicity than it has had in its entire history, and which
has damaged the reputations of those who sanctioned a decision from
which they now appear to be back-tracking.

In December, RBGE’s Regius Keeper Simon Milne appeared on TV and
radio suggesting that RGBE and Inverleith House will continue some
kind of arts-based programme. But what exactly does he mean?

What will any future RGBE visual art programme consist of? Who
will curate it? Will it be a curator who is a trained botanist with
thirty years worth of experience highlighting the symbiotic
relationship between art and the natural world, as is the case with
Paul Nesbitt? Or will this once amazing space for thrilling and
challenging art be reduced to showing bland job lots designed to
brighten up department store cafeterias?

The vagueness of RBGE’s language echoes that used by the
property developers currently trying to buy up every patch of public
land in Edinburgh and beyond. Similarly vague noises regarding
artistic provision in various high-rolling constructions are made,
only for them to be mysteriously airbrushed from the blueprint once
bricks and mortar are in place.

This is plain from the proposals of the developers and hoteliers
currently attempting to turn the City of Edinburgh Council-owned old
Royal High School – a shamefully neglected historic site once
mooted to become the home of the Scottish Parliament – into an
elite hotel. It’s plain too in the ongoing proposals for other
hotel developments in Edinburgh in the Cowgate and King Stables Road.

What sort of artistic provision RBGE is suggesting for Inverleith
House remains unclear, as does how its dismissal of the A Future
for Inverleith House report tallies with whichever way the
organisation proceeds. Whether such a seeming contradiction might
work within the long-awaited working group remains to be seen.

While the working group will consist of still yet to be named
representatives from Creative Scotland and other interested bodies,
it isn’t clear yet whether Paul Nesbitt will be included. Given
that he has included a botanical frame of reference in every
Inverleith House show during his tenure, and that he understands the
relationship between art and the natural world in a way that senior
RBGE staff patently do not, his presence in all discussions is vital.

Under RBGE’s current management, there is no apparent will for
Inverleith House to remain as a committed contemporary art space, and
any talk of Inverleith House not washing its face financially is a
red herring. Questions need to be asked too regarding any future
commercial events already booked into Inverleith House, and what role
Sodexo might play in them. Sodexo is a multi-national company based
in France who deliver retail catering, restaurant, public cleaning,
sales, marketing and events services at RBGE.

The decision by RBGE to close Inverleith House was at best ill
thought-out and seriously misguided. It was made even more so by the
– to be kind – naïve belief that the door of Inverleith House
could be locked on October 23rd 2016 without any
announcement, and that nobody would notice, let alone kick up a fuss.
The decision was also ideological.

Inverleith House is the latest victim of an ongoing culture war
being conducted quietly but effectively by managerialists,
bureaucrats and social engineers who think only in terms of financial
gain, and who would rather shut down all artistic activity that
doesn’t act as a pacifier. Anything complicated, awkward or noisy,
anything rooted in ideas and truth rather than sentiment or kitsch,
or anything that just can’t make a buck, is no longer considered
valid for these post-truth, anti-intellectual times.

So when RBGE say that Inverleith House can’t wash its face
financially, and when Michael Gove describes Helen Marten’s work as
‘modish crap’, these are the dispatches of a philistine
establishment who, as Wilde wrote in The Picture of Dorian Gray,
‘know the price of everything and the value of nothing.’ Wilde
also had plenty to say, incidentally, concerning the relationship
between art and nature.

The decision by RBGE middle managers to shut down Inverleith
House’s contemporary art programme is the unintended epitome of
Gove’s soulless rhetoric regarding ‘the tragic emptiness of now.’
Those who made the decision, and those like them, will continue to
rake over stony ground, stamping out any blossoming of artistic life
they can’t quite get their bean-counting heads around. It may take
a miracle to make it happen, but if Inverleith House is not reclaimed
by the public to whom it belongs, those behind its closure won’t be
the only ones living in the wilderness.

About Me

Coffee-Table Notes is the online archive of Neil Cooper. Neil is an arts writer and critic based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Neil currently writes for The Herald, Product, The Quietus, Scottish Art News, Bella Caledonia and The List. He has contributed chapters to The Suspect Culture Book (Oberon), Dear Green Sounds: Glasgow's Music Through Time and Buildings (Waverley) and Scotland 2021 (Eklesia), and co-edited a special Arts and Human Rights edition of the Journal of Arts & Communities (Intellect). Neil has written for Map. Line, The Wire, Plan B, The Arts Journal, The Times, The Independent, Independent on Sunday, The Scotsman, Sunday Herald, Scotland on Sunday, Sunday Times (Scotland), Scottish Daily Mail, Edinburgh Evening News, Is This Music? and Time Out Edinburgh Guide. Neil has written essays for Suspect Culture theatre company, Alt. Gallery, Newcastle, Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art, Collective Gallery, Edinburgh, Berwick upon Tweed Film and Media Arts Festival and Ortonandon. Neil has appeared on BBC and independent radio and TV, has provided programme essays for John Good and Co, and has lectured in arts journalism at Napier University, Edinburgh.